Home

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Train Work in Progress - Part 6

As with each of the people on my train, I had to re-do MANY parts of the little girl and I am still not completely happy with her countenance, but you can help me decide that at the end of the post……

First the hair…..I was excited about doing the long flowing hair and started out with three beige/gold prints. In the original photo, the hair seemed to have some darker streaks running thru it, so I added a darker brown color into the mix. After cutting out the basic hair outline in freezer paper and attaching it to a base fabric, I started adding slivers of the other fabrics to create movement. It looked ok, but not exactly right.

As with the woman, I was afraid that I couldn’t get enough detail off of the photo that I had of the little girl, so I asked a young friend to pose for me. I knew that I wanted to use the original girl’s hair, but thought that I might be able to change the face out. That, however, did not work at all…..the model’s face was simply not the right shape to go with the hair, even though I tried really hard to make it work.

I ended up making three different faces for the girl. The first one used the new facial features and light colored fabrics …..she ended up looking like juvenile beauty queen!! The second one used the original facial features, but with fabrics that were still too light. My daughter said that she looked “mean”. The final face was done with much darker fabrics and I am relatively happy with her looks. I may still change the eye color….it seems too dark for the rest of her face. I also decided to remove the darker brown highlights in the hair and replace them with a much more gentle brown and that made a huge difference.

Here is a picture of the “3 faces of Eve”… the one on the right is the final one….

I had fun with her clothes and ended up using cute pink and orange prints for both the pants and shirt.

I knew that I wanted the girl to be holding a book, so I photographed my model in that manner and used her hands for the pattern. I had dreaded this particular part, but it went quickly and with only ONE incarnation. The only thing that I had to change was to cut the book apart so that the angle could be changed.

Now I was down to the shoes. As I said a few days ago, I am over doing super detailed tennis shoes so I went online looking for simple photos or drawings of shoes. Unfortunately, the first site that I ended up on was a guy who had a shoe fetish and had pictures of himself wearing women’s shoes (100’s of different ones)!!!! I quickly hit the “back” button to never return!!

I did find one simple shoe but it wouldn’t allow me to download a photo, so I took out a pencil and paper and drew it myself!!!! Now, I have NEVER drawn anything before. I have ALWAYS relied on patterns. So, this was a wonderful revelation for me. I went back to the original pattern for the little girl and sketched out the basic shape of her shoes and then added the detail from the shoe found online. I was so excited!!!!

To finish the figure, I added a bit of ric-rac to the bottom of her pants, and will see how that looks once I have done the threadwork….it may have to come off.

Anyway….here she is at the moment……

After I have appliqued her hair down, I am going to add a few more fusible bits to the ends to make it look even more wispy.

So, one more person and then a LOT of attaching and finishing to go!!!